COLLABORATION WITH ESTUDIO CARME.PINÓS. ON-SITE ASSISTANCE FOR 75 SOCIAL HOUSING UNITS EMVS IN MADRID. VALLECAS 70

SOMOS.arquitectos collaborates with Estudio CARME.PINOS to develop work on site for 75 VPO in Vallecas (Madrid). Tasks included complete assistance with execution control, detailing design and on-site supervision, ensuring that works are carried out to specific standards set up by Estudio Carme Pinós.

Despite the fact that Social Housing works within very restrictive limits, the project by Carme Pinos starts off willing to achieve its greatest identity gesture through volumetric play. This argument leads them to think that the formal quality of the building should not be overly subordinated to the details of the facade, but that it should further rely on the play of volumes under shadow and light to achieve its sculptural expression.


Given the responsibility of architects within urban design, thinking not only of the people who inhabit this building but also in regard to those passing by on the street, they have created large porticoes that run throughout the whole depth of the volume, revealing the green area inside the block to the outside, while reducing the number of ground floor apartments which are always problematic in relation to privacy issues. The few that remain in this level are compensated with a garden in the back and a green area left in the setback of the main front façade ensuring the necessary privacy. Open entrance hallways help erase the limits between private/public, offering an intermediate space for the city.

All volumetric setbacks not only offer the desired formal game but allow them to resolve the minimum number of apartments given in the program with only three communication cores.